Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 235-236: Altman's All-Stars

As regular readers of the Oscar Challenge blog will now, I often put together films from the same director that have been nominated in the same decade. This time it's the turn of Robert Altman whose movies M*A*S*H and Nashville were give nods in the 1970s. Both very different in tone, they are similar in the way that Altman employs his ensemble casts and the sprawling nature of the plot.

In the early 1970s, Altman had his first breakthrough with M*A*S*H, a film loosely based on Richard Hooker's original novel about medical personnel stationed at an army hospital during the Korean War. The main plot of the film sees three new surgeons arrive at camp and instantly stir things up. The first two of these troublemakers are 'Hawkeye' Pierce and 'Duke' Forest who regularly steal, drink and cause chaos. They instantly rub their new cam pmates up the wrong way especially Robert Duvall's religious Frank Burns who they're able to get rid of due to his inferior surgical abilities. Senior nurse Margaret Houlihan is similarly outraged by their sexist behaviour and their insistence on referring to her as 'Hotlips'. Joining their number soon after is 'Trapper' McIntyre another surgeon who is as insubordinate as Hawkeye and Duke. The film then becomes quite episodic in nature but does see Trapper and Hawkeye become medical heroes after saving the lives of a congressman's son. Despite seemingly uninterested in their work, our central duo are always concerned with doing the right thing, even if they have to resort to blackmail to do it. This theme about the working man sticking up for the people who can't defend themselves, spoke to the audiences of the 1970s who were experiencing political unrest at the time.

Altman quickly marked himself out as a maverick director by using very little of the original source novel for his book while in addition encouraging the actors to improvise in certain scenes. However, when the film was made in 1970, Altman hadn't earned the reputation yet to work in such a reckless way. This led to the film's leads Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland to try and get Altman sacked on numerous occasions. Obviously, the film today is hailed as a classic and went to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes as well as the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Altman's gambles all paid off here as I thoroughly enjoyed M*A*S*H and thought it was one of the best Oscar-nominated comedies of all time. As Hawkeye and Trapper; Sutherland and Gould were fantastic and they shared great on-screen chemistry throughout. Altman's script was packed full of great lines but there was plenty of social commentary hidden behind the laughs. Despite having quite a sporadic structure, M*A*S*H was held together thanks to the strength of its characters and the solid narrative that Altman provided throughout. This film fully put Altman on the map and, after watching it, it's not hard to see exactly why.

Five years later, Altman returned to the Best Picture list with another film that has a sprawling narrative - Nashville. Set in the musical city of Tennessee; Nashville follows twenty-four characters during five days which lead up to a political rally for vice-presidential candidate Hal Philip Walker. The film basically focuses on the country music scene and the measures some will go to to enhance their careers. There's the legendary Haven Hamilton, who has political aspirations of his home and whose fame is fading fast. Barbara Jean is one of the most popular country singers around but suffers from exhaustion and spends most of the film in hospital. As the country music business is a fickle one, Barbara Jean's manager eventually replaces her at several events with the inferior but beautiful Connie White. We also meet Tom Frank, a womanising member of a country music trio who attempts to break out on his own throughout the course of the film. Then there's Sueleen Gay, another aspiring country singer who has no talent what to speak of and gets exploited in one of the film's most memorable scenes. The film's climax brings the majority of the characters together at the aforementioned rally and sees one of the characters attempt to shoot two of Nashville's biggest stars. Despite this tragedy occurring Winifred, another aspiring country singer, takes to the stage and finally gets her big break.

Having enjoyed the sprawling, episodic narrative throughout M*A*S*H, I was dismayed that I didn't enjoy the same structure so much with Nashville. I believe part of the reason for that is due to the fact that it's a drama rather than a comedy so can't get away with being as fragmented as Altman's previous film. One of the other issues the film had is that there's far too many characters and interconnected plots for the film to work. At over two and a half hours, I felt the film dragged too much despite the fact that almost half of it was musical performances by various members of the cast. That being said some of these musical performances were incredibly entertaining and really gave Nashville a sense of place. In fact one of its more positive features is how it immerses the viewer in the culture and style of Nashville; including the religious nature of all of its inhabitants seen in the scenes set at various church services. There were some brilliant performances amongst the ensemble most notably from Lily Tomlin, Ronee Blakely and Henry Gibson. Throughout this voyage I have questioned why a few of these films are held up as classics and I'm afraid I'll have to add Nashville to this ever-growing list. Don't get me wrong I did enjoy parts of it, but as a whole it was overlong and incredibly dull in places.

Next time we have yet another comedy, the last of the genre to win the Best Picture Award.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 221-222: A Couple of Herbert's

In the days of five films being nominated for Best Picture, it was quite a rarity for two works by the same director to pop up in the category. One year where this did happen was 1978 where Herbert Ross' films The Goodbye Girl and The Turning Point were both nominated for Best Picture. Ross started off on the stage as both an actor and choreographer and these influences play into both of these films. As these films were nominated in the same year, I decided to tackle them alphabetically but chronologically they are in the reverse order so read the following post whichever you want.

I start with The Goodbye Girl, which was scripted by Neil Simon, a writer who Ross had previously worked with several times. The story concerns dancer and single mother Paula McFadden who is about to leave her New York apartment in order to join her married lover Tony in L.A. However, her plans are dashed when Tony changes his plans and Paula, along with her daughter Lucy, are stuck in an apartment which has already been subletted to Elliot - an actor friend of Tony's. Despite paying for the whole apartment, Elliot lets Paula and Lucy stay though they struggle to cope with his quirky behaviour. While Paula attempts to revive her dancing career, Elliot is cast in a production of Richard III however his director's vision for the character is vastly different from Elliot's. Predictably, Elliot and Paula become close as he becomes attached to Lucy, though she's less than happy to see her mother start another potentially disastrous relationship.

The Goodbye Girl is an interesting film and I personally feel that it influenced a lot of the romantic comedies that are released today. However, unlike most of those films, The Goodbye Girl is both romantic and funny though it does drag in some places. The film's main strength is definitely Richard Dreyfuss' performance who, as Elliot, really capitalises on his ability to use physical comedy. Dreyfuss' turn in the film rightfully won him a Best Actor prize and he became the youngest man to win the accolade until 2002. Neil Simon keeps the action ticking along nicely with both Elliot and Paula experiencing the highs and lows of being a performer in New York. Marsha Mason, who was nominated for Best Actress, plays her part well though did make it hard for me to like Paula at times. Though I feel her and Dreyfuss really played their scenes together well and made me believe in the burgeoning relationship. Watching in 2013, I found some of the set pieces incredibly cheesy; most notably Elliot attempting to have a chat with Lucy by hiring a horse-drawn carriage but I think at the time these would've been seen as a lot more adorable. Talking of adorable, I didn't really warm to Quinn Cummings as Lucy but I do find it hard to like a lot of child performers especially when the character in question acts like an adult. Ultimately The Goodbye Girl is an easy-to-watch film which didn't set my world alight but was charming and witty enough to fill up two hours of my time.

While there were some allusions made to how tough the world of ballet was in The Goodbye Girl, The Turning Point makes that point its key theme. The Turning Point stars Shirley MacLaine, as DeeDee a former professional dancer who left the ballet behind to raise a family with fellow dancer Wayne. The pair now co-own a studio together in Oklahoma and are delighted when their old friends from the American Ballet Company come to town. DeeDee is also reunited with her old friend Emma, who has stayed with the company and become one of the most renowned dancers in the country. Their reunion stirs up memories for both as DeeDee feels that Emma convinced her to have a family because she was a better dancer while Emma disagrees. Meanwhile, Emma encourages DeeDee's elder daughter Emilia to become a dancer herself and she joins the company and is paired with Russian dancer Yuri. Yuri and Emilia begin an affair however she later starts to get upset when she realises that he sleeps with other girls as well as her. DeeDee also embarks on an affair with an old friend, which angers Emilia who feels that her mother and father should remain faithful to one another. At the end of the film stars are made and others end their career but the ballet is always the most important thing to the majority of the characters.

Indeed, the ballet sequences are possibly the most memorable element of The Turning Point as Ross uses them to narrate his story. As someone whose personally not a big fan of the ballet, I felt these segments went a bit long but were necessary for the story to progress. I felt the film was at its strongest when either Emma or DeeDee were on screen as it's always a joy to see Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine in a film. Both were nominated for Best Actress and both nominations were more than deserved. MacLaine excelled at playing a woman who was unsure of her place in the world and regretted a lot of the decisions she'd made. Meanwhile Bancroft was great as the fading star, unsure of where her life would take her next and unable to cope with the changing face of her industry. Professional dancer Leslie Browne proved to be a fairly captivating presence as Emilia, an innocent who was thrust into the harsh world of dance and struggled to cope. Though Browne deserved her Best Supporting Actress nod, I don't think Mikhail Baryshnikov really deserved his nomination for Supporing Actor. Indeed, I feel Baryshnikov was nominated more for his outstanding dance skills than he was for his acting, which left a lot to be desired. The Turning Point was a stronger visual spectacle than The Goodbye Girl and therefore it was given a lot more nominations. In fact it holds the records for the film with the most nominations, including a director nod for Ross, without winning a single award. However, I feel that The Goodbye Girl had more heart and kept my attention while the extended ballet scenes in The Turning Point ruined the pace a little.

Overall I feel Ross is an under-rated director who really gets the best out of his actors and I'm really not sure why he's not a name that's as remembered as some other directors who were big in the 1970s. Next time I'll continue to look at another body of work this time by an actor who has amassed an impressive twelve acting nominations at the awards.